NEBRASKA STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

OFFICERS: CONSTITUTING BOARD OF MANAGERS.

J. STERLING MORTON, President,

ROBERT W. FURNAS, First Vice-President,

Nebraska City.

G. M. LAMBERTSON, Second Vice-President,
CHARLES H. GERE, Treasurer,

Brownville.

Lincoln.

Lincoln.

Lincoln.

HOWARD W. CALDWELL, Secretary,

COMMITTEES.

Publication-THE SECRETARY, S. L. GEISTHARDT, S. D. Cox. Obituaries-R. W. FURNAS, GEO. L. MILLER, W. H. ELLER. Program-THE SECRETARY, J. L. WEBSTER, J. M. WOOLWORTH. Library-JAY AMOS BARRETT, MRS. S. B. POUND, PROF. F. M. FLING.

I.-HISTORICAL PAPERS.

THE PONCAS.

Presented at the session of the State Historical Society, January 16, 1895, by Jay Amos Barrett.

Few people, perhaps, notice that the census reports of 1880 and 1890 do not agree about the area of Nebraska. Indeed the small difference of about 600 square miles might easily be supposed to be due to correction of estimates, in the case of a state having nearly 80,000 square miles within its borders. There is, however, a long story to tell about that matter, and a simple statement of it I now offer you.

In 1882, a law* of the United States gave to Nebraska the land north of the Niobrara river that had previously belonged to Dakota. Our northern boundary follows the forty-third parallel eastward to the Missouri river. Before 1882, it followed this parallel only to the Keya Paha branch of the Niobrara, and these two streams constituted the remainder of the northern boundary to the Missouri. In and about the corner of lowland, prairie, and hills between the Niobrara and the Missouri, the earliest white explorers found a tribe of simple Indian folk, living by the chase and by primitive horticulture, unassuming, generous, and brave. The report of the expedition of Lewis and Clark to the northwest, which reached the confluence of these rivers in September, 1804, has this item:

"The two men whom we dispatched to the village of the same name, returned with information that they had found it on the lower side of the creek; but as this is the hunting season, the town was so completely deserted that they had killed a buffalo in the village itself. This tribe of Poncaras, who are said to have once numbered 400 men, are now reduced to about fifty, and have associated for mutual protection with the Mahas, who are about * 47th Congress, 1st sess., chap. 52: U. S. Statutes, vol. 22, pp. 35, 36.